Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Strategy”
Reinforce is a mechanic originally from Lorywn block, and lets you use cards to buff up your creatures. Reinforce, always written as Reinforce N, is an activated ability that works when the card with Reinforce is in your hand. It essentially turns the card into a modal card. You can play the card normally and pretty much ignore Reinforce. Or, …
Out of all the classic card effects in Magic, lifegain might get the least respect. And though it pains me to say it…with good reason. The problem with expending cards and mana to gain life – especially if that’s the only thing you’re doing – is that lifegain alone will never win the game for you, so all you’re doing …
Hideaway, originally from Lorwyn, appears only on six cards so far in Magic…and here they are! It represents two abilities – the first, way more boring one, is that the permanent with Hideaway will enter the battlefield tapped. The second says that when the Hideaway permanent enters the battlefield, look at the top four cards of your library, then exile …
Champion, from Lorwyn Block, appears on creatures, and appears on those cards as “Champion a ____” where the blank is a creature type. There are two abilities that go along with Champion – the first says that when it enters the battlefield, sacrifice it unless you exile another ____ you control” (again, a creature type). The second ability says that …
There’s a lot of two-card combos in Magic, but the best ones often come from way back in the game’s history. To a degree, that’s just statistics – the number of unique cards printed over the last 29 years is just so much larger than the pool of Standard-legal cards at any given point. This means that the combos we …
Transfigure is from the set Future Sight, and as of the time of this post appears on only one card: Fleshwrither. It’s a pretty simple mechanic, working like Transmute but for creatures. On your turn, at sorcery speed, if Fleshwrither is on the battlefield, you may pay the Transfigure cost. When you do, sacrifice Fleshwrither, then search your library for …
Poison counters are an alternate win condition that has been around since the early days of Magic. Instead of dealing 20 damage to your opponent, you could give them 10 poison counters and win the game. But the keyword “poisonous” didn’t appear until Future Sight, where it codified the mechanic and gave tribal Sliver decks an even more powerful angle …
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty marks the return of fan-favorite mechanics like ninjutsu, as well as a powerful mechanic from the faraway plane of New Phyrexia! What is Phyrexian Mana? Phryexian mana denotes a mana cost that can be paid in one of two ways: You can either pay one mana of the appropriate color, or you can pay two life. Take …
Reconfigure is a new mechanic in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty for “Artifact Creature – Equipment” cards. If those seem like some incompatible card types, you’d normally be right, as creatures can’t be equipped to other creatures. But that’s where our new mechanic comes in. Reconfigure represents several different abilities. First, it functions as an Equip stand-in. You can pay the reconfigure …
Future Sight produced a lot of one-off mechanics, but you never know when one could crop up in Magic again. Today, we’ll be taking a look at a variation on storm called gravestorm! What is Gravestorm? Only appearing on Bitter Ordeal from Future Sight, Gravestorm lets you copy a spell as you cast it. However, instead of counting the number …
